Y2K bill makes way to White House

Though it's a few weeks later than anticipated, the
bill that would limit lawsuits arising from the Year 2000 technology problem
is expected to be on the President's desk for signing within the next few
days.

Senate staffers tell CNET News.com that Senate Republican leaders had trouble
gathering the appropriate members of Congress who backed the measure for the
signing ceremony because many had left for a Fourth of July break, which ended
Sunday. A ceremony is now being planned for Thursday.

The ceremony marks the "enrollment" of the measure as a bill approved by
both houses of Congress. Once enrolled, the bill will be sent to the White
House for the President to sign into law. The President, by
law, has 10 days to sign the legislation.

"We were looking forward to having the bill enrolled before the recess," said
Mark Pearl, general council and senior vice president for the Information Technology Association of America.
"We're down to 172 days until 2000. If we want to send a message that there is
still some time to get Y2K work done, we need to have it signed sooner rather
than later."

Signing the measure into law would bring to an end a lengthy stalemate over
how to limit a potential flood of litigation arising from
Y2K problems--which by some estimates could cost $1 trillion and cripple the
economy. Republicans pressed by high tech and business interests have
supported the bill, but the Democrats backed by trial lawyers and consumer
protection groups have argued that it lets businesses off the hook.

As reported
earlier, the Y2K Act aims to put a check on lawsuits by providing
disputing parties with a 90-day "cooling-off" period to mitigate their
grievances out of court. The measure would also set some caps on punitive
damages for small businesses and protect government entities including
municipalities, school, fire, water, and sanitation districts from punitive
damages. The bill further aims to protect those not directly involved in a
Year 2000 bug failure.

The measure also would make it harder to file year 2000-related class-action
lawsuits. In addition, the two sides agreed to increase the monetary threshold
for class-action lawsuits from $1 million to $10 million before a case can be
moved to federal court.

The final compromise also adds some consumer protection language that says in
most cases a defendant is liable only for that proportion of the damage he
causes. The measure ensures, for example, that consumers can get full benefits
in cases of bad faith.

The Year 2000 problem, also known as the millennium bug, stems from an old
programming shortcut that used only the last two digits of the year. Many
computers now must be modified, or they may mistake the year 2000 for the year
1900 and may not be able to function at all.

Discuss: Y2K bill makes way to White House

See the future of Firefox now

Mozilla is working on a major overhaul of its web browser. Its official release is still months away, but you can take Firefox 57 for a spin today.

by Matt Elliottby Jason Pepper

1:44

Apple to invest $1B in content, Essential phone to ship within a week

The biggest news in the world of tech include Apple's $1 billion dollar commitment to original content, Essential finally shipping preordered phones and Google's Home smartspeaker now allowing for phone calls.